Liberty University showcased its plans for student learning improvement by launching its Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) with QEP Week March 21-25 and Research Week March 29-April 2.

Elisa Rollins, director of the QEP and the Center for Applied Research and Scholarship (CARS), said the QEP is a five-year plan to improve a specific area of student learning.

“The Quality Enhancement Plan is a requirement designated by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) of reaffirmation for accreditation,” Rollins said. “Our QEP focuses on enhancing student learning in the area of research and scholarship.”

Rollins said the program, titled “Illuminate: Cultivating a Community of Research,” has been in development since the fall of 2013, and she started with gathering ideas and information from faculty, staff and students.

“It’s a plan that we began working on two-and-a-half years ago with a call for topic submissions from our faculty, staff and students,” Rollins said. “It was really a grassroots campaign to try and find … areas that our students, faculty and staff (want to expand).”

Rollins said they received around 130 topic proposals in total. Through a content analysis of those topics, they found that “research and scholarship” and “faith integration” were the two most requested topics.

In order to present this program to the students, CARS hosted two weeks’ worth of events — QEPWeek and Research Week.

Rollins said QEP Week was a tremendous success and was hosted as a marketing campaign to provide awareness of the plan to faculty, staff and students.

“(QEP week was held) so that they would understand what the QEP was, why it was important, what Liberty’s focus was, how it would benefit them, and what opportunities would be available,” Rollins said.

Rollins said they held a Q&A tent outside of the Jerry Falwell Library Monday, March 25. Current student researchers from the school of heath sciences were there to answer students’ questions about what it is like to do research on campus, and QEP office staff were in attendance to answer any questions regarding specifics of the QEP.

Rollins said Research Week was a success, with more than 350 students involved in the week’s events, through participation as a presenter or by volunteering at the event.

She said Research Week is actually an initiative that came out of the QEP proposal. It is a combination of undergraduate and graduate research symposia from years past and has been expanded to include additional exposure to what research can do around the world.

“This year we added a keynote speaker, Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of the MRI,” Rollins said. “He came on Tuesday evening and spoke about the process that he went through to discover and develop the MRI method.”

Rollins said this was an example of what can happen when research is taken from the classroom and applied to a real-world environment.

She said that while research is the main focus of the QEP, faith integration is equally as important.

“Participating in a culture of inquiry and participating in opportunities of discovery allows (students) to know God in a deeper way,” Rollins said. “The more we study creation and the world around us, the more we begin to understand him.”

Research Week was the last big event for the QEP for this semester, but Rollins said students should keep an eye out for more opportunities coming up in the fall.

Rollins said if students are interested in doing research, they should talk to current student researchers and faculty to become more aware of research that is happening within their programs.

More information about the QEP can be found online at www.liberty.edu/QEP.

Liberty student Michael Carson recently won a grant from the Virginia Academy of Science (VAS) for his research on Alzheimer’s disease, adding $500 to Liberty’s research fund.

Carson presented in front of a panel of judges Oct. 26 from the VAS, competing against not only other Liberty students, but also students from schools such as Virginia Tech and George Mason University.

Carson said he is one of six students to work with assistant professor of biology Gary Isaacs, who has acquired more than $90,000 to fund research on the disease.

“Dr. Isaacs has provided me the unique opportunity to participate in research as an undergraduate student,” Carson said. “It is definitely a team effort. In an undergraduate environment, it is more common to have a number of students working on projects.”

Carson said he knew that as a premed student, working on research like Alzheimer’s would only be beneficial to him in the long run.

“Many people have seen the effects of Alzheimer’s disease firsthand and are extremely interested in research that seeks to explain the epigenetic nature of the disease,” Carson said.

Isaacs said he asked Carson to be on his research team after he performed well in his genetics course here at Liberty.

“Michael has great promise as a scientist,” Isaacs said. “He is very bright, hard-working and can communicate ideas well to others. These attributes clearly aided his preparation and presentation at the VAS meeting.”

Isaacs said he also started researching Alzheimer’s while he was a student at Liberty.

“I started studying Alzheimer’s back in 1998,” Isaacs said. “It was for my senior honors thesis, which I submitted with the help of my thesis chair, David DeWitt.”

Carson said he feels that it is important to research Alzheimer’s.

Several students at Liberty have seen the impact of the disease on their own family members. Jenn Timmerman was only five years old when her great-grandmother was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“My great-grandmother was a big part of my life,” Timmerman said. “I didn’t understand it at first, because she still came and spent time at my house during Christmastime.”
Timmerman said it was not until she was 10 that the effects started to become more noticeable.

“It was really sad, because she was a doll collector (and) a girl scout troop leader,” Timmerman said. “She held a pottery class in her basement and (was) a huge force in the community, but the disease took away her ability to do any of that.”

Timmerman said it is great to see Liberty students working on research for the disease.

“Alzheimer’s runs in my family. and my whole family is praying that someone is able to find a cure before the disease affects anyone else in my family,” Timmerman said. “If Liberty can help this person find a cure, I think that’s really awesome.”